Try to stay in good spirits. You’ll make it through!

I’ve been going back and forth between actively looking to buy one and saying I’ll wait til they get better hardware. Was expecting to have to wait for a while for that so this was definitely surprising.

However while my interest in the new one is incredibly high, I still can’t shake the feeling that it’s still a bit underpowered. Not being able to get above 30/40 FPS in games like Cyberpunk make me feel like I’d be at least a little disappointed. Granted being able to even play AAA games at all on a handheld is awesome, so I may be being unrealistic here in my expectations (I’ve never owned a handheld so my comparisons are just with PCs and consoles).

Nevertheless I think I might finally take the plunge on the 16th.

So the pilot apparently told police that he was on magic mushrooms and hadn’t slept for 40 hours.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/us/alaska-airlines-off-duty-pilot-arraignment.html

Just the guy I’d like to have in charge of my plane!

Text of article:

Pilot Who Disrupted Flight Said He Had Taken Psychedelic Mushrooms, Complaint Says In an interview with the police, the off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot also said he thought he was having a nervous breakdown and had not slept in 40 hours, according to a criminal complaint.

An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to shut off the engines during a flight on Sunday told investigators that he thought he was having a nervous breakdown at the time and had consumed psychedelic mushrooms, court documents said.

In an interview with the police after he was taken into custody, the pilot, Joseph D. Emerson, 44, said he had not slept in 40 hours and had been depressed for about six months, according to a federal criminal complaint.

The officer and Mr. Emerson “talked about the use of psychedelic mushrooms, and Emerson said it was his first time taking mushrooms,” the criminal complaint states.

The complaint did not provide further details about when Mr. Emerson consumed the mushrooms or the quantity taken, or how he consumed them.

“I didn’t feel OK,” Mr. Emerson told the police, according to the criminal complaint. “It seemed like the pilots weren’t paying attention to what was going on.”

He also told the police, according to the complaint, “I pulled both emergency shut off handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon said on Tuesday that Mr. Emerson had been charged in federal court with one count of interfering with flight crew members and attendants.

Mr. Emerson has also been charged in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland, Ore., with 83 counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment and one count of endangering an aircraft, court records show. He is to be arraigned on those charges on Tuesday afternoon.

It was not immediately clear if Mr. Emerson had a lawyer.

Mr. Emerson, of Pleasant Hill, Calif., has been an airline pilot for more than two decades. Throughout his career, he has completed his required Federal Aviation Administration medical certifications, and his certifications have been never denied, suspended or revoked, Alaska Airlines said. Multnomah County court records indicate he does not have a criminal record.

On Sunday, Mr. Emerson was riding in a jump seat in the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines jet, an Embraer 175, the authorities said. The flight, operated by Horizon Air, a regional subsidiary, left Everett, Wash., about 5:23 p.m. bound for San Francisco, with four crew members and 80 passengers onboard. Professional pilots say it is common for them to ride in the cockpit jump seat while shuttling to and from work.

At first, Mr. Emerson chatted casually with the two pilots in the cockpit, talking about different types of aircraft, the complaint states.

But when the plane was about halfway between Astoria, Ore., and Portland, one of the pilots saw Mr. Emerson throw his headset across the cockpit and announce, “I’m not OK,” the complaint sates. The pilot then saw Mr. Emerson try to grab two red handles that cut off fuel to the engines, the complaint states.

After a brief physical struggle with the pilots, Mr. Emerson left the cockpit. Alaska Airlines said in a statement on Monday that, because “some residual fuel” remained in the line, “the quick reaction of our crew to reset the handles restored fuel flow and prevented fuel starvation.”

If Mr. Emerson had successfully pulled the engine shut-off handles down all the way, “then it would have shut down the hydraulics and the fuel to the engines, turning the aircraft into a glider within seconds,” the complaint states.

While walking to the back of the plane after he left the cockpit, Mr. Emerson said to a flight attendant, “You need to cuff me right now or it’s going to be bad,” according to the complaint. After Mr. Emerson was restrained in the back of the plane, he tried to grab the handle of an emergency exit door, but was stopped by a flight attendant, federal prosecutors said.

Another flight attendant heard Mr. Emerson “make statements such as, ‘I messed everything up’ and that ‘he tried to kill everybody,’” the complaint states.

Acting according to F.A.A. procedures and guidance from air traffic controllers, the crew diverted the plane to Portland International Airport, where it landed safely at about 6:30 p.m.

After Mr. Emerson was escorted off the plane, a passenger, Aubrey Gavello, told ABC News: “The flight attendant got back on the speaker and said, plain and simple: ‘He had a mental breakdown. We needed to get him off the plane immediately.’”

Psychedelics have been gaining medical and legal acceptance, propelled by a growing body of research suggesting that they could be used in the treatment of mental disorders. On Jan. 1, Oregon became the first state to legalize the adult use of psilocybin derived from mushrooms.

Voters in Colorado approved a measure last year to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms and to set the state on the path to a legal therapeutic market. In other states, including Texas, lawmakers have authorized studies of psilocybin for treating ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The F.D.A. has granted the drug “breakthrough therapy” status, which allows for expedited review of substances that have demonstrated substantial promise.

Mr. Emerson joined Horizon Airlines as a first officer in August 2001, Alaska Airlines said. In June 2012, he joined Virgin America as a pilot. When Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin in 2016, Mr. Emerson rejoined the company as a first officer for Alaska Airlines. In 2019, he became a captain, the company said.

We’d also have a speaker if the democrats voted for Gym!! It’s obviously their fault!!

< / fox >

Thanks for the explanation. Do you know how they’re planning to implement this client side scanning? Take an iPhone for example— where Apple has already ditched their plans to do the same device-wide. Is it planned for WhatsApp, Signal etc. to be updated to force perpetual scanning of the iPhone’s photo album? Because that can be turned off quite easily at the OS level.

The only way I could see them doing it is by scanning any image that is selectively chosen to be sent before the actual message itself is sent—i.e. after it’s selected but before the send button is pressed. Otherwise it’s breaking the E2E encryption.

Is that the plan?

lol, good one

You’re right- theory probably wasn’t the best word. It is known that companies do this but it’s impossible to concretely say how and in what circumstances prices change.

There is a theory that travel websites use trackers and other information readily available about your device and browser to advertise different prices to different people. A lot of VPN companies use this in their marketing actually— showing different prices for the same airline tickets depending on which VPN server you’re connected to in the world.

I haven’t done much research on this personally, but you may be able to see it in action by opening the same site in a normal and an incognito window and searching for a flight/hotel. Or trying the aforementioned VPN trick. There however doesn’t seem to be any specific rhyme or reason for it, and no one can say that XYZ browser connected to ABC server will get you the cheapest prices. There are just way too many variables in play and these kinds of algorithms the websites use are all well-guarded secrets.

Had_ it last night— 2am on Oct. 11th— on my work iPhone SE2. On a wireless charger in Sleep Focus. My 14 Pro was fine both nights (Sleep focus, wired charging). Both on 17.0.3.

Wonder if Apple will make a statement as this seems to be super widespread. And it doesn’t seem like there’s any particular pattern for who it happens to.

Yay! We narrowly avoided a catastrophe that we ourselves caused! Go us!!

Pretty sure there are at least some limitations to that. In a public toilet for instance…

I’m really glad I’ve stopped actively using Reddit. The day Apollo shut down was my last day on the platform. Sure if a search result leads to a Reddit post I’ll still go, but long gone are the days of mindless scrolling through r/all. Probably has significantly improved my mental health too.

Full article since it’s paywalled for some:

Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death.

That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” (The phone call was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.) Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantic’s publication of a profile of Milley, by this magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who detailed the ways in which Milley attempted to protect the Constitution from Trump.

And yet, none of the nation’s front pages blared “Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution” or “Former President Accuses General of Treason.” Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.

Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes. The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.

Trump loves to hide behind the thin veneer of plausible deniability, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. If a mob boss were to say, “In times gone by, people like you would have had their legs broken,” nobody would mistake that for a historical observation. The suggestion is clear, and it comes from a man who has one of America’s loudest megaphones—one that is directed squarely at millions of extremists who are well armed, who insist that the government is illegitimate, and who believe that people like Milley are part of a “deep state” plot against the country.

Academics have a formal term for exactly this type of incitement: stochastic terrorism. An influential figure with a large following demonizes a person or a group of people. The likelihood is strong that some small number of followers will take those words literally—when Trump implies that Milley deserves to be put to death, some of his disciples might take it as a marching order. The number of those who take action does not have to be large for the result to be horrific.

Already, one of Trump’s minions in Congress has echoed the incitement to violence. The Republican Paul Gosar of Arizona wrote—in his taxpayer-funded newsletter, no less—that “in a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.” The meaning is not ambiguous: Gosar is explicitly saying that killing Milley would be desirable.

From the November 2023 Issue: The Patriot

As a political scientist who studies political violence across the globe, I would chalk up the lack of high-profile assassinations in the United States during the Trump and post-Trump era to dumb luck. Already in 2018, one deranged Trump follower, Cesar Sayoc, sent pipe bombs to public figures (and a media organization) who just so happened to be among those whom Trump most often attacked in his Twitter feed. Thankfully, nobody died—not because the dangers of Trump’s rhetoric were overstated but because Sayoc was bad at building bombs.

Heading toward one of the most consequential, divisive elections in American history, every ingredient in the deadly recipe for political violence is already in the mix: high-stakes, winner-take-all politics; widespread conspiratorial delusions that detach followers from objective realities; a suggestion that one’s political opponents aren’t “real Americans”; a large supply of violent extremists with easy access to deadly weaponry; and a movement whose leader takes every opportunity to praise those who have already participated in a deadly attack on the government.

Eventually, all luck runs out. Political violence is notoriously difficult to forecast with precision, but would anyone really be surprised if Trump’s violent rhetoric led to real-world attacks in the run-up to the 2024 election—or in its aftermath, if he loses?

For all of these reasons, Trump’s recent unhinged rant about Milley should be a wake-up call. But in today’s political climate, the incident barely registers. Trump scandals have become predictably banal. And American journalists have become golden retrievers watching a tennis-ball launcher. Every time they start to chase one ball, a fresh one immediately explodes into view, prompting a new chase.

Eventually, chasing tennis balls gets old. We become more alive to virtually any distraction: The media fixate on John Fetterman’s hoodie instead of on stories about the relentless but predictable risk of Trump-inspired political violence.

Bombarded by a constant stream of deranged authoritarian extremism from a man who might soon return to the presidency, we’ve lost all sense of scale and perspective. But neither the American press nor the public can afford to be lulled. The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.

Or doesn’t care. Anything to own the libs.

I live in that gigantic red and purple blob in Northern Europe and I’m lucky if I can see 3 stars in the sky at night.

I’ve never ever seen a totally star-filled sky and it’s something I’m very sad about. One day I’ll head out to somewhere like the Australian Outback and just gaze up in awe.

Guaranteed employers will post ridiculous, not-at-all-helpful salary ranges to get around the law.

Until it’s added to the “vintage” list, which will be a while (another 3-5 years). Until then they will stock repair parts for the 12 mini.

The benefit at least in Germany is for commuters. My monthly pass went from costing over 150€ to 49€ as I had to pass through two transit agencies to get from my home to work. The fact that every transit company sets their own fares and doesn’t cooperate with neighbouring companies is fully irrelevant now to the joys of many.

I don’t know if France is structured the same way, or if the plan of this is also to include local transport, but the Deutschlandticket is saving me a lot of money and headache.

I think the point is that even if an extension comes from a trusted source, the developer could fairly easily push out an update that turns the extension into malware. Check the GitHub link in another comment below where the developer posts the solicitation emails he gets on a regular basis offering to monetize his extension. He isn’t selling out, but maybe not every dev is as willing as he is to forgo a potentially lucrative offer.

My company will give you a blank laptop if you have confidential information on it when traveling to the US. The policy is always to comply and hand over everything if asked so they want to minimize any risks of information falling into the wrong hands.

That policy also applies for traveling to China. So it’s pretty telling that my company thinks the US and Chinese governments are both risks to its intellectual property.